School of Business Administration

MIS 3301

Management Information
Systems
Dr. Hayat El Asri
 Chapter
II

Global E-business and Collaboration

 Learning Objectives
2.1 What major features of a business are important for understanding
the role of information systems?
2.2 How do systems serve different management groups in a business,
and how do systems that link the enterprise improve organizational
performance?
2.3 Why are systems for collaboration and social business so important,
and what technologies do they use?
2.4 What is the role of the information systems function in a business?
Organizing a Business: Basic Business Functions (1 of 2)

• Business: formal organization that makes products or provides a service

in order to make a profit

• Four basic business functions

• Manufacturing and production
• Sales and marketing
• Finance and accounting
• Human resources
Organizing a Business: Basic Business Functions (2 of 2)

Five basic business entities

• Suppliers
• The source of goods and materials essential for business operations
• Customers
• The clients who engage with the business by purchasing its products or services.
• Employees
• The workforce driving daily operations
• Invoices/payments
• The financial transactions that facilitate the exchange of goods and services between the business
and its clients.
• Products and services
• The core offerings of the business
The Four Major Functions of a
Business
 Business Processes
• Logically related set of tasks that define how specific business tasks are
performed
• The tasks each employee performs, in what order, and on what schedule
• E.g., Steps in hiring an employee
• Some processes are tied to functional area
• Sales and marketing: identifying customers
• Some processes are cross-functional
• Fulfilling customer order
• Encompasses activities from sales and inventory management to logistics and customer service
• Requires coordination among multiple departments
The Order Fulfilment Process
How I T Enhances Business
Processes (1 of 2)
• Automation of manual processes
• Implementing software to automatically handle invoice processing
instead of manually inputting data.

• Change the flow of information

• Shifting from email communication to a collaborative platform for
real-time updates and project management.
How I T Enhances Business
Processes (2 of 2)
• Replace sequential processes with simultaneous activity
• Adopting agile methodologies in software development to allow coding, testing,
and deployment to occur concurrently.

• Transform how a business works

• Integrating a comprehensive Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to
streamline sales, marketing, and customer support functions.

• Drive new business models

• Transitioning from a traditional retail model
to an e-commerce platform
Managing a Business and Firm Hierarchies

• Firms coordinate work of employees by developing hierarchy in which

authority is concentrated at top.
• Senior management
• Middle management
• Operational management
• Knowledge workers
• Data workers
• Production or service workers
• Each group has different needs for information.
Examples
• Senior Management: Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
• Middle Management: Operations Manager
• Operational Management: Team Supervisor
• Knowledge Workers: Engineer, Data Scientist
• Data Workers: Data Analyst
• Production or Service Workers: Assembly Line Worker
Levels in a Firm
Discussion

What types of information do you think are

pertinent to each level of the hierarchy?
Example: Senior Management

• Long-term organizational goals

• Market trends
• High-level financial overviews.
Example: Middle Management

• Day-to-day processes
• Team performance
• Departmental goals.
Example: Operational Management

• Specifics on workflows
• Project timelines
• Team productivity.
The Business Environment
• Businesses depend heavily on their
environments for capital, labor, supplies,
and more.
• Global environment
• Technology and science, economy, politics,
international change
• Immediate environment
• Customers, suppliers, competitors,
regulations, stockholders
The Role of Information Systems in a Business

Firms invest in information systems in order to:

• Achieve operational excellence

• Develop new products and services
• Attain customer intimacy
• Improve decision making
• Promote competitive advantage
• Ensure survival
Systems for Different Management Groups

• Transaction Processing Systems (TPS)

• Keep track of basic activities and transactions of organization

• Systems for Business Intelligence

• Address decision-making needs of all levels of management
• Management information systems (MIS)
• Decision support systems (DSS)
• Executive support systems (ESS)
Transaction Processing Systems
• Serve operational managers
• Principal purpose is to answer routine questions and to track the flow
of transactions through the organization

• Examples: Airline Reservation System

• When a customer books a flight, the airline reservation system processes the
transaction by confirming seat availability, updating the booking database,
and generating a booking confirmation.
 Transaction Processing Systems
• Monitor status of internal operations and firm’s relationship with
external environment
• TPS processes transactions in real-time, allowing for immediate updates on
internal operations.
• TPS generates reports on processed transactions.
• TPS often includes monitoring tools that track key performance indicators
(KPIs) and operational metrics.
• TPS may be integrated with external systems, such as suppliers, distributors,
or regulatory bodies.
• Major producers of information for other systems
• Highly central to business operations and functioning
Example: A Payroll TPS
Management Information Systems
• Provide middle managers with reports on firm’s performance, to help
monitor firm and predict future performance
• Summarize and report on basic operations using data from TPS
• Provide weekly, monthly, annual results, but may enable drilling down
into daily or hourly data
• Typically not very flexible systems with little analytic capability
How MIS Obtain Their Data from the
Organization’s TPS
Example: A Sample MIS Report
 Decision Support Systems

• Serve middle managers

• Support nonroutine decision making

• Example: What is impact on production schedule if December
sales double?

• Often use external information from TPS and MIS

Decision Support Systems
• Model driven DSS
• Voyage-estimating systems: utilize mathematical models to estimate fuel
consumption, travel times, and costs based on different routes, weather
conditions, and vessel specifications.

• Data driven DSS

• Marketing analysis systems: gather and analyze large datasets related to
customer behavior, market trends, and marketing campaign effectiveness.
Voyage-Estimating Decision Support System
Executive Support Systems
• Serve senior managers
• Address strategic issues and long-term trends
• E.g., what products should we make in five years?
• Address nonroutine decision making
• Provide generalized computing capacity that can be applied to changing
array of problems
• Draw summarized information from MIS, DSS, and data from external
events
• Typically use portal with web interface, or digital dashboard, to present
content
A Digital Dashboard
Systems for Linking the Enterprise
• Enterprise applications
• Systems that span functional areas, focus on executing business processes
across the firm, and include all levels of management
• Four major types
• Enterprise systems
• Supply chain management systems
• Customer relationship management systems
• Knowledge management systems
Enterprise Systems

• Also called enterprise resource planning (ERP ) systems

• Integrate data from key business processes into single system
• Speed communication of information throughout firm
• Enable greater flexibility in responding to customer requests, greater
accuracy in order fulfilment
• Enable managers to assemble the overall view of operations
Supply Chain Management (SCM ) Systems
• Manage relationships with suppliers, purchasing firms, distributors,
and logistics companies
• Manage shared information about orders, production, inventory
levels, and so on
• The goal is to move the correct amount of product from the source to the
point of consumption as quickly as possible and at the lowest cost
• Type of interorganizational system
• Automating flow of information across organizational boundaries
Customer Relationship Management (CRM )
Systems
• Help manage relationship with customers
• Coordinate business processes that deal with customers in sales,
marketing, and customer service
• Goals:
• Optimize revenue
• Improve customer satisfaction
• Increase customer retention
• Identify and retain most profitable customers
• Increase sales
Knowledge Management Systems

• Manage processes for capturing and applying knowledge and

expertise
• Collect relevant knowledge and make it available wherever needed in
the enterprise to improve business processes and management
decisions
• Link firm to external sources of knowledge
Intranets and Extranets
• Technology platforms that increase integration and expedite the flow
of information
• Intranets:
• Internal networks based on Internet standards
• Often are private access area in company’s website
• Extranets:
• Company websites accessible only to authorized vendors and suppliers
• Facilitate collaboration
E-Business, E-Commerce, and E-Government
• E-business:
• Use of digital technology and Internet to drive major business processes
• Includes activities: marketing, supply chain, collaboration, communication, etc
• E-commerce:
• Subset of e-business
• Buying and selling goods and services through Internet
• E-government:
• Using Internet technology to deliver information and services to citizens,
employees, and businesses
• Examples: online tax filling, e-procurement systems
What is Social Business?
• Use of social networking platforms to engage employees, customers,
suppliers
• Conversations to strengthen bonds
• Requires information transparency
• Seen as way to drive operational efficiency, spur innovation,
accelerate decision making
Discussion
Did social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc) influenced your purchasing
decisions at some point?
What is Collaboration?
Growing importance of collaboration:

• Changing nature of work

• Growth of professional work
• Changing organization of the firm
• Changing scope of the firm
• Emphasis on innovation
• Changing culture of work and business
Business Benefits of Collaboration and
Social Business
• Investment in collaboration technology can return large rewards,
especially in sales and marketing, research and development.
• Productivity: sharing knowledge and resolving problems
• Quality: faster resolution of quality issues
• Innovation: more ideas for products and services
• Customer service: complaints handled more rapidly
• Financial performance: generated by improvements in factors above
Requirements for Collaboration
Tools and Technologies for Collaboration
and Teamwork
• Email and instant messaging (IM )
• Wikis
• Virtual worlds
• Collaboration and social business environments
• Virtual meeting systems (telepresence)
• Cloud collaboration services
• Google Drive, Dropbox
• Microsoft SharePoint and IBM Notes
• Enterprise social networking tools
Evaluating and Selecting Collaboration Tools
1. What are your firm’s collaboration challenges?
2. What kinds of solutions are available?
3. Analyze available products’ cost and benefits.
4. Evaluate security risks.
5. Consult users for implementation and training issues.
6. Select candidate tools and evaluate vendors.
Systems for Knowledge Management
• Explicit vs. tacit knowledge

• Systems for knowledge management

• Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Systems
• Locating and sharing expertise
Enterprise Content Management System
The Information Systems Department
• Programmers
• Systems analysts
• Principle liaisons to rest of firm
• Information systems managers
• Leaders of teams of programmers and analysts, project managers, physical
facility managers, telecommunications managers, database specialists,
managers of computer operations, and data entry staff
• Senior managers: CIO, CPO, CSO, CKO, CDO
• End users
Information Systems Services
• Computing services
• Telecommunications services
• Data management services
• Application software services
• Physical facilities management services
• IT management services
• IT standards services
• IT educational services
• IT research and development services
Mini Case Study: Videoconferencing
• Compare the capabilities of videoconferencing tools. How do they promote
collaboration and innovation?

• How is videoconferencing related to the business models and business

strategies of the organizations described in this case?

• Describe the specific ways in which videoconferencing technology can help

improve their operations and decision making.